In my many years as a consultant, I have had the opportunity review quite a few emergency operations plans. One of the most common tasks I am asked to perform is to ensure that the EOP is conformant to the guidance in CPG 101 Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans . The one thing that I am never asked is whether I think the plan will work. Sadly, in many cases, my answer would be, “no.”

There are any number of reasons a plan will fail. In fact, one of my most popular presentations is devoted to this particular topic. Rather than cram everything into a single “top ten” post, I thought it might be more productive to write a series of posts on some of the key reasons that could lead to failure of your plan in a crisis.

Heading my list of potential problems is blind acceptance of the format guidance offered in CPG 101. This frequently produces what Dr. Erik Auf der Heide refers to as the “paper plan syndrome,” a situation where the mere existence of a plan is equated with preparedness. Sociologist Lee Clarke makes a similar point, noting that many plans are used as symbols to demonstrate that authorities are in control of a situation when just the opposite is true. The late Enrico Quarantelli put even stronger, “One of the greatest impediments to disaster preparedness is the tendency to believe that it can be accomplished merely by the completion of a written plan.”

In recent articles in my newsletter, both my colleague, Tim Riecker, and I stressed the need to make sure your plan is based on the needs and capabilities of your organization. One-size-fits-all planning almost guarantees that the resulting plan will not be aligned with those requirements. Slavishly following CPG 101 does not automatically guarantee success and can even be a barrier to it.

Lucien Canton is consultant specializing in helping managers lead better in a crisis. He is the former Director of Emergency Services for San Francisco and the author of the best-selling Emergency Management: Concepts and Strategies for Effective Programs used as a textbook in many higher education courses.

Some recent social media discussion on EOC management systems has prompted far too many thoughts for me to write in small character quantities…

I’ve been fortunate to have been involved in prospecting several systems for EOC management and other workflow management needs, along with obviously having used a multitude of these systems in EOCs and other capacities. I certainly have my preferences of different systems as well as those I’m really not a fan of, which I’m not going to get into here, though I will say there are some smaller but very successful vendors with great products and excellent track records. I think everyone needs to spec these out for themselves. One note, before I speak a bit about that process, is that you don’t necessarily need a proprietary system. Current technology facilitates file sharing, task management, accessible GIS, and other needs, though full integration and intentional design are just some of the benefits of using a proprietary system. A lot of organizations learned over the past 16 months or so of the pandemic they can get considerable mileage out of applications like Microsoft Teams and Smartsheet. There are also benefits to systems which users may use on a more regular basis than an EOC management platform which may only be used during incidents, events, and exercises.

I’ll say there is no definitive right way to spec out a system, but there are a lot of wrong ways to approach it. My observations below are in no way comprehensive, but they are hitting a lot of the big things that I’ve seen and experienced. Also, my observations aren’t highly techy since that’s not my forte (see my first item below).

Form a Team: (Yeah, we are starting this out like CPG 101.) Bring the right stakeholders together for this. Consider the whole community of your EOC. However you...